Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, conductor, and organist of the early Romantic era. A grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he showed early gifts and, as a teenager, produced the Octet and the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. His 1829 revival of Bach's St Matthew Passion helped renew interest in older music. He composed symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano pieces, and the oratorios St Paul and Elijah. He served as municipal music director in Düsseldorf and conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and in 1843 founded the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1841 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia summoned him to Berlin as Kapellmeister, a post he held while shuttling between Berlin and Leipzig until he negotiated his release and returned permanently to Leipzig in 1845. He died in Leipzig at thirty-eight.